[sterlingice]

Time for the Season 47 PA Roundup. II is a pretty crazy place. I'm pretty sure I had the 6th or 7th best team in the series but that's not where I ended up. Last season, I started out 0-4 and seemed destined for an auto-relegation slot. This season, I got lucky in a couple of early games to build somewhat of a cushion. Everyone knew Spocker was heading back to MLS and Slug Fighters were tanking for relegation. However, slots 2-7 were wide open.

Another storyline was that TargetPractice6 was back up in II with his second team after quitting HT a few years ago so we had 2 FOFCers in the series.

No PAs for the first half of the season but then the updates come regularly:

Originally Posted by 12-19-2011

(12:49) Halftime of Season 47

The Hippos find themselves coasting into the midseason break with an 8 game unbeaten streak, tied for 14th in the USA. However, it took a victory Sunday to jump the team from 6th to 3rd in a very close II.3. The schedule gets much tougher in the second half with only 3 home games and it will be a tall task to stay above the relegation line.

The home team is an underdog for Wednesday's cup matchup against FC Walosy. It will take a very good game by the Hippos to advance beyond round 8 of the Cup. There are 5 teams in hotly contested II.3 still in the Cup, so each round is critical both to cup play and to series play.

With the new loyalty bonus, Houston has put up its top 3 ratings performances in team history this season. During the match against the Apollos, they netted an average match rating of outstanding, pushing the "we're so good" achievement to 21 points. The team still is working on their quest for 80 stars (35 points), having posted another 79.5 this past week.

Originally Posted by 01-02-2012

(19:12) Catching Up, Part I

Season 47's Hippos made a deep cup run this season, before losing to Full Contact Runnerd in Round 9. They have made 9th 3 times in franchise history not including season 44's 10th round showing.

In our thrilling round 8 Cup win against FC Walosy, the Hippos reached 80 stars for the first time ever. This moves our Star collector rank up to 6 with 35 points. The team now has 356 of 998 achievement points. This is one of the team's 19 of 31 possible achievements.

With 5 games left in the season, Houston is in 2nd place in ultra-competitive II.3. Spocker seems to have the series wrapped up but 2nd thru 6th are separated by 3 points and 4 of the 5 teams have exactly +9 GD.

If you haven't seen it yet- our interview is up on the USA front page. Thanks to drew7 for his "Interviews with Members of Series II.3" series! We've had a lot of positive response and it has been fun.

The team has been delinquent in the Press Announcement category this season. Part II will be posted tomorrow

Originally Posted by 01-03-2012

(04:43) Catching Up, Part II

The team is reaching the end of a training cycle and we've already waived goodbye to two players: Christian Svatunek and Carlos Teti.

The following players are currently for sale:
Ciprian Pârvu (232223973) - titanic defense, utopian sp
Rubén Enrique Portas (280656856) - 23yo supernatural defense, formidable playmaking

Nicu Stoian (286252936) and Eddie van Acht (291704800) will likely be up for sale in the next season or so as both are 22yo world class defenders with formidable playmaking (inquire, if interested).

Not all is about departing, however, as the team has welcomed the following:
#75 Eduard Masrramon, set pieces ace
#67 Angelo Mellino, offensive central defender

They join trainees Iosif-Constantin Chiacu and Niko-Ville Hallasaari, who are almost ready for the senior squad.

As mentioned before, we've been slow in the PA category. Coming up in the next 2 weeks:
* Charlie Partridge retired to HHH
* Hippo Friendly Cup 27

Originally Posted by 01-08-2012

(21:23) Hippo Friendly Cup #27: Hippo European Vacation!

This year, it's time to get back to a theme for the Hippo Friendly Cup. For this season it is "Europe" (rare flags excluded)! First, we start with a Baltic Cup as Houston hosted JK Sakutajad (thanks, rubbe9!) from Eesti last week. The GM is half Lithuanian, by heritage, so expect them up next along with Latvija. Slovenija, Srbija, and Bulgaria may also pay us a visit this season.

Next week, we visit Palestine United (thanks, Shadi-O!), one of our 4 remaining rare flags. The following remain:
Cameroon (Away) - Final away flag
Cuba (Home)
Palestine (Home)

Below are our current flag chasing stats:

Visited (126 Visited Flags; 446 754.61 Coolness)
Coolness: USA-T2, World-T172
Flags: USA-T2, World-T104

Hosted (105 Hosted Flags; 447 961.90 Coolness)
Coolness: USA-2, World-138
Flags: USA-T10, World-T609

Visited+Hosted (231 Total Flags; 894 716.51 Coolness)
Coolness: USA-1, World-81
Flags: USA-2, World-T106

The flag logo has also been updated

Originally Posted by 01-22-2012

(18:09) Charlie Partridge, All American Hippo now in Hall of Heroes

#11 Charlie Partridge was part of the Hippos "All American Infield" along with Erwin Vickers and Thomas Little. While Vickers had the highest pure playmaking rating and Little the best all-around, Partridge was the most versatile.

He was purchased 20 seasons ago from Bergen Kamelutleie for $5.1M and his titanic playmaking garnered him a rating of 8 stars, good enough for top 20 in Hippo history.

As a student of the game, he retires with extra-terrestrial experience. With his high (inadequate) leadership, he was often a team captain- 2nd only to the legendary Q with 85 competitive games.

Later in his career, his quickness allowed him to shift to winger and he ended with 62 career goals and 2 career hat tricks.

He was 2nd in games played with 324, sandwiched between Little's 366 and Vickers's 290. Competitive matches were no different as he was poetically positioned between Little and Vickers with 275.

The legendary midfield trio have now all found their way to the HHH.

Originally Posted by 02-07-2012

(18:42) Hippos Survive II.3 Again!

Against heavy odds, the Houston Hippopotami managed to place 4th in II.3, to live for at least one more season. Just 4 points separated 2nd through 5th and we'll be glad to be rid-- er... wish all the best of luck to emmpee! Also, we'll miss each of the teams leaving but a special mention to Airborne Penguins, our mutual supporter and fellow FOFCer.

Just a Few Season Ending Notes:

* Since our last PA, the team has picked up one last defense trainee: Damiano Volontè, who will primarily be a wingback in the mold of Iosif-Constantin Chiacu

* Joseph Pittesser finished 5th in the series in scoring with 8 goals to go along with 8 in the Cup.

* Coach Gilceu Bianco noted "That form slump really hit us hard in the second half but the guys pulled through".

* Hippo Friendly Cup #27 will conclude next week and then it's time to look forward to the new season.

What is that familiar stench I smell for next season? Is that... BALLCANO? There goes the neighborhood

Originally Posted by 02-16-2012

(12:58) Hippos End European Vacation: HFC #27 A Smashing Success

Houston concluded a successful hosting of high level European teams this past week, winning all but one game during this season's Hippo Friendly Cup

We sincerely thank the following teams for their visit:
JK Sakutajad (Eesti, Div 4)
Sergoon (Latvia, Div 5)
FC Sokolas (Lietuva, Div 2)
Salamanca Estudiantes (Slovenija, Div 2)
FK Razvrljavač (Srbija, Div 2)
Tigers_ (Bulgaria, Div 3)

The team took one break to visit Palestine United, one of our two remaining away flags.

Next year, it looks like South America will be the theme of the first 4 weeks, which means that aside from the below, Houston will have all top 100 flags, both home and away:
Cameroon (Away)
Cuba (Home)
Palestine (Home)

Here's how the Team's rankings stack up:

Visited
Cool (452K)
USA-1, World-T145
Flags (127)
USA-T1, World-T108

Hosted
Cool (442K)
USA-2, World-165
Flags (110)
USA-7, World-T478

Host+Visit
Cool (894K)
USA-1, World-84
Flags (237)
USA-1, World-T95

Only 19 flags to go!

Lastly, drew7 of Westchester Fire put together a HT Press set of articles where he interviewed all members of II.3 and they were posted to the HT USA front page. My Q&A is listed below:

Originally Posted by 12-28-2011

Interviews with Members of Series II.3 (pt.5)
Written by drew7

This is the fifth article in a series of interviews about life and hattrick with members of USA series II.3. Take a look at some of the personalities in this series, and get to know a few of your fellow users better!

1. You have to tell me the origins of your username and team name.

Houston Hippopotami is the name I've used for fantasy football for as long as I can remember. I was looking for something alliterative and thought "big lumbering animal" and the rest writes itself.

The username is a bit more nonsensical. I used to play a lot of video games in the dorms with a guy who went by DryIce and I was looking for a good non-cliche adjective that described ice. Sterling describes something both of high quality and I was thinking of something that shined like ice. So, not much there, but even weirder-even tho it's nonsensical-if you google it, you'll find a couple of other sterlingices out there that are not me. I mean, I realize it's the internet and you're never going to have something truly unique but I was pretty surprised.

2. You live in Houston? I hear summers are sweltering. True? Any hurricane scares?

Yeah- that's just part of living there. However, I don't actually live in Houston currently and haven't in quite a while. I live in Indianapolis currently, working for a large IT company doing work for a large pharmaceutical company. That said, it's where I'll always be "from" as it's where I grew up and went to high school. As for the weather, yeah, it's always been humid but this year was record breaking, even for them-they had something 23 straight days of 100 degrees which beat the old record by like a week. However, it's not all bad. I was down in Houston for Thanksgiving, visiting my parents, and we grilled steaks in the backyard in shorts on Friday. Why? Because we could.

4. You are a flag collector (hate the phrase "flag chaser"). How has that been? I try to chat with these people even if its one mail. Different fascinating cultures. Do you do that?

These guys get a lot of that stuff and they probably just filter through it. I try to send a "thank you" message but I'm not very good at remembering so I apologize to the teams I have forgotten.

Once I have completed my flag collection, I'll probably arrange an end game to my time with hattrick-an all out push for MLS, get the remaining attainable achievements, and tie up loose ends. Flag "chasing" has increasingly become an ugly business, a mess of people making second and third teams and trading those flags for other rare flags or months of supporter. Of the couple thousand teams in all the rare (<100 user) countries in HT, I'd be surprised if more than 1/3rd were legit. To this day, I'm particularly happy that I have picked up all of my flags in an "honest" way- almost all have just been random challenges or pool challenges but it's a lot of work each week. The only non-random challenges were that I won a couple of flag chasing contests and one team offered to play me so he could be my final away flag (thanks, Inseltraum!)

5. Favorite part of Hattrick?

After almost 8 years of playing, there's really not much of the game left to explore. Sure, I could go experiment with a new formation or new experimental training style or formation, but it's hard when I've put in a good amount of work to get to where I'm at to change things just to maybe see results in a couple of year's real time. It's interesting to think back where I was in life when I started playing compared to now. The best addition in the last couple of years was the youth academy-it was nice to have a second team to play around with and keep track of.

The competition is blase to me with a random match engine when you get to this level in the game and my goal when I started was just to get to III. Keeping that in mind, my favorite accomplishment is that the Hippos have the all-time records for a team in a single Div III in the USA with 210 games played, 401 points, and +278 GD (616-338). In the interest of full disclosure, if you combine Mountain Kings time in III.4 and III.5, they would hold the III records.

At the end of the day, without the competition, it's about the comradery. Back when I joined, I was part of a huge community over at FOFC. At its Hattrick height, there were over 130 HT teams from FOFC in Hattrick from around 2004-2006. There aren't many of us left now. However, it's great to see one back in this series in evillincoln.

6. What do you train? Any team plan in place or just happy to be here?

I started by training playmaking, which improved my team by leaps and bounds. However, that's always been the most important aspect of Hattrick from day 1 so training that introduces a ton of variation to your team quality, depending on where you are in your training cycle. I've been training defending for the last 15ish seasons as it is "least important" and still profitable. I was training 8 last season but a couple made it up to world class+ and it was time to sell earlier this season. I won't replace them until being bounced from the cup and I need to look at that market- it's becoming less and less profitable but I still need to keep the cash rolling in to support wages, old player replacement, etc. Any thoughts as to how many teams in Div II or higher are even still training?

7. Last question-are you seriously a Houston Astros fan?

Nope. I was raised a 4th generation Cubs fan. And because that wasn't enough suffering, I became a Royals fan when I lived in Kansas City. That's the team I follow most now.

8. Okay I liedFavorite meal?

I am a fan of all sorts of food. Some of my favorite meals that come to mind involve Lou Malnati's pizza in Chicago, seafood at a place in Atlanta, a meal called Bursa Kebob I ate in Turkey when I was younger, and steaks from either mine or my Dad's grill. And that's just a small sampling of what I like. My wife makes me run to support my food habit

Good luck sterlingice!

There was a bit of editing done- for instance, I had a more nuanced answer to the Astros question as they're my 3rd team but I haven't lived in Houston for years and I follow KC much more. But I think the "Nope." to cover all of that made it sound more funny to drew7. Also, you noticed we went straight from question 2 to 4. I didn't realize this at the time but he only had 12000 characters to work with and I'm not sure you've noticed but I can be a bit verbose.

I had to send him the answers to the questions in a 9-part HT-mail due to the 1000 character HT Mail limit.

.....

So, what does the future bring?

I'm going to need to use up some of my cash as my team is getting older and skills are starting to erode in the over-30 crowd. But I have the cash to do that (Div 2 Wealthiest Teams):
1. Yoder Hicks II.2 31 215 275 US$
2. FC Drakkar II.4 18 962 698 US$
3. Houston Hippopotami II.3 18 295 437 US$
4. Primetimers II.3 18 103 763 US$

I started back in the middle of season 18 and did this dynasty 10 seasons- about 3 years- ago. Season 49 will be the 30th anniversary. I should do something for that but it won't be a full blown dynasty like the previous one, I don't think.

SI